U.S. and Russia are about to face a nuclear stand-off that has the potential to lead to WW3.
The two old super-power rivals are talking past each other when it comes to the deployment of the new U.S anti-missile system in eastern Europe aimed at allegedly stopping Iranian missiles.
Russia understandably sees it as a direct threat by the fact of its proximity, likening it to Russia deploying anti-missile systems in Cuba and arguing that it is not directed at the U.S. but a rogue state beyond.
The United States and her allies celebrated the opening of a long-awaited ground-based missile defense system in Romania on Thursday, not giving consideration to Russia’s concerns, arguing that it is not a threat against Russia (not directly), but is meant to deter rogue states that lie beyond Romania.
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In a way NATO could also be defending the Russians. However, Russia does not see it any other way than a direct threat.
Both sides are now considering the possibility of a nuclear strike by the other, either accidentally or intentionally, using mini nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
‘Certainly it’s a threat,’ according to RT:
“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia. The president himself (Vladimir Putin), let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against?“, Peskov said.
The response comes after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated the site is not a threat to Russia.
“This system is directed against threats coming from outside the Euro Atlantic space,” he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the remote Deveselu airbase in southern Romania.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said the system was “purely defensive, not directed against any nations and cannot be used in an offensive operation.”
On Friday, the US will start construction work on an ABM site in Poland due to be ready by late 2018.
The US and NATO have been arguing for decades that the plans to deploy an anti-missile shield in Europe would not compromise Russian security. The AEGIS Ashore system deployed in Romania is a less ambitious incarnation of the ABM system, which replaced the initial project envisioned by the Bush administration. The shield is designed to protect Europe from a possible missile attack by Iran, the alliance says.
Russia remains unconvinced. While it doesn’t dispute that its strategic nuclear arsenal would not be compromised by the Romanian site if a global nuclear war were to happen, Moscow says it would be a significant factor in a smaller-scale conflict that doesn’t involve hundreds of missiles fired by each side.
The alleged defensive nature of the system is under debate as well. Long-range radar, part of the AEGIS antimissile system, can be used to spy on missile tests and aircraft in Russian airspace, providing the US with additional intelligence.
Moreover, the system uses a vertical launching system to fire missile interceptors, which was derived from the naval version of AEGIS. The same launchers are used to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles from US guided-missile destroyers. Moscow says the Romanian site could easily and secretly be converted into a cruise missile base that can attack targets on Russian soil.
The Romanian deployment is perceived by the Russian military as a violation of the spirit of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which Moscow and Washington signed in 1987. The US under President George W Bush unilaterally withdrew from another Cold War treaty, which banned it from developing a national antiballistic missile in the first place, so Moscow is suspicious of American intentions.
Russia has suggested on many occasions signing a legally-binding deal, which would address Moscow’s concerns with US antimissile plans in Europe, but Washington has rejected the idea.
Deputy secretary of defense addresses Russia’s concerns, saying that the shield is not targeting Russia, reports the New York Times:
Russian officials reiterated their position that the American-built system imperiled Russia’s security. But the public discussion in Russia was darker, including online commentary of how a nuclear confrontation might play out in Europe, and the prospect that Romania, the system’s host, might be reduced to “smoking ruins.”
“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.
“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia,” he said. “The president himself, let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against.”
The United States has asserted that the anti-ballistic missile system would protect only against “rogue” states, particularly Iran, and provide no protection for either Europe or the United States from Russia’s far larger arsenal of nuclear missiles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization site will be controlled by an American officer.
The system, called Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base. The United States on Friday planned to break ground on a second site, in Poland, that should be completed in 2018. But a deputy United States defense secretary, Robert Work, reiterated Thursday there are “no plans at all” to strengthen this missile umbrella to protect against Russia.
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Russian defense experts consider the site a threat.
“We still view the destructive actions of the United States and its allies in the area of missile defense as a direct threat to global and regional security,” Ms. Zakharova said.
She said that the Aegis Ashore launchpad was “practically identical” to a system used aboard Aegis warships that is capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles.
While the United States says it has no Tomahawk missiles at the site in Romania, the launchpad violates a 1987 treaty intended to take the superpowers off their hair-trigger nuclear alert, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, by banning land-based cruise and medium-range missiles with a range from 300 to 3,400 miles.
The short flight time of these missiles diminished to mere minutes the window Soviet leaders would have had after a warning to decide whether to launch a second strike, raising the risks of mishaps. Any redeployment of nuclear-capable missiles in Central Europe would roll the clock back to this nerve-racking 1980s status quo.
“We have to announce this openly, without any additional diplomatic formulations,” Ms. Zakharova said of the Russian assertion the site violates the intermediate-range missile ban. “We are talking about violation of this treaty.”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has warned that an American antimissile deployment in Eastern Europe could prompt Russia to withdraw from the treaty. The United States last year accused Russia of violating the treaty by failing to declare the true range of two missile types.
Last fall, Russian security officials appeared to drop hints of another military response to the missile defense system — a nuclear-armed drone submarine. Russia, this leak appeared to say, has options.
During a high-level security meeting, a television camera zoomed in on an open binder showing the weapon’s design, ostensibly by accident.
The drone, according to easily decipherable text accompanying the design drawing, would be capable of carrying a large nuclear device into coastal waters and detonating it, touching off a radioactive tsunami to flood and contaminate seaside cities.
The submarine would “defeat important economic objects of an enemy in coastal zones, bringing guaranteed and unacceptable losses on the country’s territory by forming a wide area of radioactive contamination incompatible with conducting military, economic or any other activities there for a long period of time,” it said.
A Russian commentator, Konstantin Bogdanov, wrote on Lenta.ru, a news portal, that the antimissile sites in Eastern Europe might even accelerate the slippery slope to nuclear war in a crisis.
They would inevitably become priority targets in the event of nuclear war, possibly even targets for preventive strikes. Countries like Romania that host American antimissile systems might be the only casualties, he wrote, whereas the United States would then reconcile with Russia “over the smoking ruins of the East European elements of the missile defense system.”
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That would be world war four as world war three happened in the high theater near space in the 1960`s.Russia and america alone had a satellite war,the test deemed starfish prime was really a nukes in near space blowing up war satellites those cuban missles were remotely controlled from satellite so we have been here before.if you study history you will find the space peace treatees signed by america and russia which limit war to non-space war no new war satelites or reagan`s star wars which the movie is based upon.that is why the advent of china/russia-HGV hypersonic glide vehicles is a big deal they don`t fall within the star wars or near space high theater treatee.the HGV stay within orbit and uses a shorter pathway to target at speeds upto 7,000 miles per hour unmanned and remotely controlled again.The HGV can carry a full payload even nuke warheads and our missle defence system won`t be able to shoot down those HGV`s too fast too low flying and not outside the space treatee.But WWII saw about the same buildup before the allied forces stopped the atomics and missles from being used.Now everyone uses those rockets/pads based on the nazis.You would have to get the HVG on the pad or counter build a space based weapons to stop the HGV we can`t space pad weapons or russia would also get into the arms build up in space the MAD vs MAD world go space star war
World war three, with their Christian and Muslim culling genocidal slaughter… should we be surprised? https://jamessssmith.com/2015/04/04/john-woodman-an-epilogue/ I’m not? They’re all in on the communist U.N. population reduction scheme.